Benchmarks

The benchmarks use the REST API running on a ‘live’ RegTest wallet server to produce global metrics about performance.

Currently this includes the rate of transaction broadcast and processing and its interaction with the size and composition of the utxo set. It is likely that the benchmarks will be added to and changed from what they are today (perhaps with an ergonimic way of gathering profiling data at runtime).

The benchmarks are not run in the Azure pipeline in order to avoid slowing it down. Furthermore, the results would not be consistent across time because the underlying hardware and strain on the Azure agent will vary over time. Therefore, the benchmarks should be run on your local development machine where these factors can be controlled for.

Installation of dependencies

  1. Install pytest pre-requisites:

    python3 -m pip install pytest pytest-cov pytest-asyncio pytest-timeout electrumsv_node openpyxl

  2. Install the ElectrumSV-SDK (follow instructions here: https://electrumsv-sdk.readthedocs.io/ ) and then do:

    electrumsv-sdk install node
electrumsv-sdk install electrumx
electrumsv-sdk install --repo=$PWD electrumsv

This will install the repositories and dependencies for these components.

Settings

The SDK components should be stopped before running the tests as the tests automate resetting and starting these services - it will fail if they are already running.

The current stresstest automates the preparatory measure of splitting utxos up to a predefined count: DESIRED_UTXO_COUNT which defaults to 5000 utxos.

There is also a parameter for how many coin splitting outputs there are per coin splitting transaction: SPLIT_TX_MAX_OUTPUTS which defaults to 2000. This is included because prior experience found that this affected throughput.

The number of worker tasks: N_TX_CREATION_TASKS (which run as coroutines on the asyncio event loop) defaults to 100. I recommend leaving this unchanged.

The total number of transactions that are created and broadcast is defined by the environment variable: STRESSTEST_N_TXS and defaults to 2000. If you want to perform a prolonged stresstest you could raise this significantly.

The timer starts when the initial coin splitting has completed and stops when all transactions have been:

  • Created and signed

  • Broadcast to the network

  • Fully confirmed and processed (there is an automated background task that mines blocks and a websocket for waiting on transaction state changes)

In summary; The default settings (as environment variables) are:

N_TX_CREATION_TASKS = 100
DESIRED_UTXO_COUNT = 5000
SPLIT_TX_MAX_OUTPUTS = 2000
STRESSTEST_N_TXS = 2000

Run with pytest

Run the benchmark:

python3 -m pytest -v contrib/functional_tests/stresstesting

The result is exported to:

contrib/functional_tests/stresstesting/.benchmarks/bench_result.xlsx

With this format:

../_images/example_bench_results.png

Run with a matrix of settings

There is also a python script for running the benchmark multiple consecutive times with a matrix of different settings and appending the results to the excel spreadsheet:

python3 contrib/functional_tests/stresstesting/run_stresstest_matrix.py

The initial output will look like this:

============================== Test Params Matrix ==============================
TestParams(number_txs=2000, total_utxo_count=2000, max_split_tx_outputs=500)
TestParams(number_txs=2000, total_utxo_count=2000, max_split_tx_outputs=2000)
TestParams(number_txs=2000, total_utxo_count=5000, max_split_tx_outputs=500)
TestParams(number_txs=2000, total_utxo_count=5000, max_split_tx_outputs=2000)
TestParams(number_txs=2000, total_utxo_count=10000, max_split_tx_outputs=500)
TestParams(number_txs=2000, total_utxo_count=10000, max_split_tx_outputs=2000)
TestParams(number_txs=5000, total_utxo_count=2000, max_split_tx_outputs=500)
TestParams(number_txs=5000, total_utxo_count=2000, max_split_tx_outputs=2000)
TestParams(number_txs=5000, total_utxo_count=5000, max_split_tx_outputs=500)
TestParams(number_txs=5000, total_utxo_count=5000, max_split_tx_outputs=2000)
TestParams(number_txs=5000, total_utxo_count=10000, max_split_tx_outputs=500)
TestParams(number_txs=5000, total_utxo_count=10000, max_split_tx_outputs=2000)
================================================================================

This can be thought of as an example script that can be tweaked to your own needs.

Logging

There is a pytest.ini file in contrib/functional_tests/pytest.ini with these settings:

[pytest]
log_cli=true
log_level=INFO

If you are finding the logging details distracting or you want more verbose logging you can refer to the pytest documentation and change the pytest.ini settings as needed.